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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

(charleshughsmith.substack.com)
476 points spking | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.211s | source
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atleastoptimal ◴[] No.42733359[source]
Every year, humanity grows richer, more resilient to natural disasters, and more capable of predicting natural disasters and their negative outcomes. The point of insurance is to spread the expected burden of calamities that will affect a minority of a population to the entire population, so that those affected will have a financial safety net. This principle works regardless of how disastrous or prone to calamity a population is. If there will be more fires, more hurricanes, etc, the market will favor homes built in different locations, different architectural styles, etc in response to changing premiums and probabilities of disaster. We don't live in a world like in 1905 where an earthquake would lead to a fire that burns down an entire city. Prosperity simply requires changing to circumstances where valid.
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Arainach ◴[] No.42733461[source]
>We don't live in a world like in 1905 where an earthquake would lead to a fire that burns down an entire city

I'm not convinced that that's true, and even if it is a huge chunk of population (world, US, pick your area, it applies broadly) keep fighting to regress us to these periods.

People complaining about rules they don't understand is in some sense as old as the existence of rules, but the internet has dramatically increased the number of people who consider themselves experts on politics, healthcare, construction, electrical code, and every other topic on the sun, and who are proud of ignoring the science and the rules and who go out of their way to avoid permits, inspections, etc.

At the same time a significant chunk of the population works to defund and defang all government, preventing the existing rules and codes - labor protections, fire protections, food safety protections, etc. - from being adequately monitored and enforced.

So you have a huge mix of things which are old and degrading, things which were never built right, and things which people are actively modifying in dangerous ways. People have a false sense of confidence build during the years where we were enforcing these rules; I do not believe that confidence is still warranted.

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AlexandrB ◴[] No.42734090[source]
> At the same time a significant chunk of the population works to defund and defang all government, preventing the existing rules and codes - labor protections, fire protections, food safety protections, etc. - from being adequately monitored and enforced.

This isn't helped by actual bad rules and regulations on the books. Some minor examples are the prop 95 warnings on every damn thing or the way CAFE standards work to encourage the sale of more pickup trucks. I don't blame some people for wanting to scrap the whole regulatory system after encountering enough of these.

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1. Sabinus ◴[] No.42734224[source]
>I don't blame some people for wanting to scrap the whole regulatory system after encountering enough of these.

Regulation can used to save lives and improve outcomes, but it can also be used to suppress competitors or favor a particular business practice and stifle innovation.